The D is older than the SuD2 by a couple years. It was also quite a bit more of a bare-bones offering by the Gibson company. Whereas my SuD2 has a proper steering wheel, hood, fenders, dash, and hydraulics, the D is absent all those "luxury" features. So, how do you steer, you ask, if there is no steering wheel? Tiller, of course. While it isn't very visible in this photo, it is there near the engine air cleaner. Pull the tiller to the rear to go right, push forward to go left.
Here's another photo of the tractor. The front lever on the left side is to raise and lower the front blade. The rear lever is to raise and lower the drawbar. The rear lever has an over-center locking feature in the raised position, no adjustable height mechanism like the front lever has.
One big reason I purchased this tractor is that it has a single cylinder air-cooled crank-start-only diesel engine, a British-made Petter model AC1Z in place of the stock Wisconsin AEH gas engine. It produces 6 horsepower at 3000 rpm. I am a fan of small air-cooled diesel engines and have an air-cooled Lister 3-cylinder engine mounted to a 12kw generator head. Lister and Petter were both British companies and rivals at one time, but both were separately purchased by a larger company and consolidated into Lister Petter Power Systems.
There are a few issues I need to deal with to make this tractor more drivable. The issues are: no engine speed adjustment from driver's seat, no engine shutdown from driver's seat, and belt clutch not releasing completely when the clutch is disengaged. While all these issues didn't keep me from driving the tractor, I needed to get them addressed soon, and today was a good day to accomplish two of them, the clutch and the engine shutoff. Ok, my simple fix for the shutoff wasn't a big deal. I just ran the included string on the shutoff lever back to a bolt I installed on the chain guard. That was easy (although not permanent). The clutch issue was more involved.
This next photo shows the issue that Gibson tractors have when one or both clutch belt guards are missing. The belts hang on the pulleys when the clutch is disengaged, which produces enough drag to partially drive the pulley/sprockets attached to the transmission. It makes getting into and out of gear a challenge.
The major obstacle with making the small pulley guard is that the diesel engine has an exposed flywheel on the back side of the engine so a guard couldn't be bolted to the engine, as Gibson had done with the stock Wisconsin engine. I had to come up with a way to hold the guard in place. I settled on a piece of angle iron bolted to the side of the tractor frame, then a couple pieces of flat bar stock welded to the angle and positioned properly at the pulley.
I cut a piece of sheet metal to 3 inches wide by about 8 1/2 inches long. I bent the metal around a small fire extinguisher canister to get the rough diameter I would need.
I test fit, bent some, fit some more, bent some more, until I got it to where it looked right. I put a flare at each end so there wasn't a sharp edge next to the belts.
This next photo shows the finished product. Not pretty but functional.
This next few photos show the clutch engaged (and also the engine shutoff string attached to a bolt - yes, I'll make something more permanent some day). There is about 3/16 inch gap between the pulley and the guard.
This next photo below shows the new belt guard in action on the small pulley set with the engine running and the clutch disengaged. The belts are not allowed to hang on the pulley anymore.
The large pulley set has a home-brewed guard but it can't be seen (bummer it's not an original). The large guard works well, as I found out after making the small guard. The large guard should actually go half way around the large pulley but it only goes one quarter the way.
It sure is a pleasure to shift gears easily now.
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